Cost-cutting, Federal Government Style

An internal memo from Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation, encouraged DOT employees to "Please Submit [Their] Cost-cutting Ideas to the SAVE Award Contest." According to the memo: Last year's winner was Trudy Givens, a 20-year employee of the Bureau of Prisons from Wisconsin, who saw that no one was reading the hard copies of the Federal Register delivered to her office each day. She said it just didn't make sense to print and send thousands of copies to employees when it's available online. While that may sound small, those costs add up across the Federal Government, and her idea is expected to save millions of taxpayer dollars each year.

On the one hand, any effort to cut government waste is commendable, and Ms. Givens's suggestion is praiseworthy. On the other hand, it highlights the total cluelessness of the federal government in that they have to rely on an employee contest to point out that prison guards might not be spending a lot of their free time reading the Federal Register delivered "each day." Golly, who would have thought?

An internal memo from Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation, encouraged DOT employees to "Please Submit [Their] Cost-cutting Ideas to the SAVE Award Contest." According to the memo:

Last year's winner was Trudy Givens, a 20-year employee of the Bureau of Prisons from Wisconsin, who saw that no one was reading the hard copies of the Federal Register delivered to her office each day. She said it just didn't make sense to print and send thousands of copies to employees when it's available online. While that may sound small, those costs add up across the Federal Government, and her idea is expected to save millions of taxpayer dollars each year.

On the one hand, any effort to cut government waste is commendable, and Ms. Givens's suggestion is praiseworthy. On the other hand, it highlights the total cluelessness of the federal government in that they have to rely on an employee contest to point out that prison guards might not be spending a lot of their free time reading the Federal Register delivered "each day." Golly, who would have thought?